The Reunion of A Thousand Lifetimes
by NightwingNinja17
Summary: Another what if story. This is for the Halo franchise. What if Colonel Mehaffey didn't die in Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn? What if she is reunited with the last man she took underneath her wings before that fateful day?


**Hey guys! I wanted to write another Halo story and this is the one that came to mind. Much like my Star Wars story Twist of Fate, it kind of follows in its footsteps as a 'What If' story. This is basically what it says in the description.**

 **SPOILER ALERT! If you haven't seen Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn or know the background of the characters that are in this story, PLEASE don't read any further. Watch both first and then proceed.**

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 **Now I really liked the show/mini-movie whatever you want to call it that 343 Industries did called Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn. They made the series to precede the Halo game Halo 4.**

 **This follows the events of a cadet named Thomas Lasky who is a 15 year old cadet at a prestigious academy. You learn a lot about his life as he's younger and what drives him throughout the series. In the midst of his freshman year as a cadet, the academy he trains at is attacked and the attackers leave almost no survivors.**

 **The leader of the academy Colonel Mehaffey kind of took Lasky underneath her wing and helped mentor him in a way. Lasky really didn't like the thought of war and so he treated his training rounds like that. Mehaffey seeing this decided that in order for Lasky to see the soldier within himself she had to nurture it out of him. Colonel Mahaffey's death, during the attack had a major impact on Lasky's mental state as she died right in front of him. He may have seen her as a mother figure, due him not having much contact with his real mother, Colonel Lasky.**

 **Anyway Lasky is one of my favorite Halo characters as in the games you get to re-meet Lasky but now he's a lot older. So my what if story is what if Mehaffey survived the attack on the academy and the unknown to her is going to board the Infinity to meet Lasky years later? I believe that the survivors would have lost contact with one another when they separated to go into the different branches that they did. So they would have no idea where one another are nor what each others ranks are if they joined the UNSC military.**

 **So without further ado, enough background info, lets get to the story.**

 **Some scenarios that aren't cannon are a figment in my imagination. These events didn't really happen but I have created it to be so for this particular story.**

 **Colonel Mehaffey's POV...**

It had been a long last couple of years for me. I had retired from my position as Colonel but was still widely known around the universe as one of the only survivors of one of the first Covenant attacks.

To be honest, I had no idea how I survived the ordeal. I always found myself reliving the horrible scene where everyone of the young cadets that I had been tasked with training, had died at the hand of that terrible mixed race of aliens.

I then found myself thinking about the various cadets that stood out amongst the crowd. There was Chyler Silva. The top of the freshman class who seemed to always have her whits about her. Then there was Michael Sullivan who always strived to make his fellow squad members laugh. I remembered he was an expert hacker too. April Orenski. How could I forget her? I remembered the day she took on the responsibility of running her own squad, how excited she was to give her first order.

Then there was Thomas Lasky. That hard headed young boy always seemed to find himself in a world of trouble, not only from his superior officers, but from his fellow squad mates as well. Despite all that he went through, between never getting to see his mother since she was always on duty somewhere, the death of his brother Cadmon Lasky, and then the eventual realization that he had an allergy to the very thing that could save his life someday, he never really wanted to be apart of the war against the insurrectionists. I remember having the faintest of doubts that he wouldn't graduate from the academy.

I still didn't even know to this day if they had survived the attack.

I was shaken from my deep thoughts when turbulence rocked the Pelican I was currently sitting in.

I had no idea where I was going. This was very strange that any of the people who served me and I served under would leave me in suspense as to what their next move was.

I sat, waiting for the reveal.

"Where are we going?" I asked as I felt a slight shift in the ship's trajectory.

"We are headed to dock with the UNSC Infinity to refuel," one of the ODSTs that served as my escort stated as he emerged from the cockpit of the landing craft. His name was Ethan. A young ODST who just joined the military as he was following in the steps of his parents, "And then I believe that the Captain of the ship wants to meet with you."

" _Meet with me?"_ I found myself thinking. This wasn't something that you heard everyday. The Captain that I had never met before wanted to meet with me, a retired Colonel and now a politician, who looked every bit the seventy years veteran of the UNSC that I was, "Did he give a specific reason as to why he wanted to meet with me?"

"Didn't say," Ethan replied, taking his post at the nearest seat to me, "It was the ship's AI that contacted us about the appointment."

I lapsed back into silence as I pondered what I was told. I began to try and fathom why the Captain of a ship I hardly knew anything about would want to see me. We were headed back to Earth as I was taking personal time off of my normal routine to enjoy the surrounding colonies. I found myself thinking about my last stop as I just finished a tour of one of the many new colonies on Mars.

Shortly after my musings ceased, I could feel the Pelican come to a stop. The small crashing noise could be heard throughout the small interior of the ship we sat in.

Soon the door to the chamber opened to reveal the inside of _Infinity_. I had heard rumors of its massive size, but this was the first time that I had seen it face to face. I watched as the hanger crew bustled about following the orders of their superiors.

"You must be Colonel Mehaffey I presume?" An unidentifiable voice asked me. I soon was greeted by a golden colored AI who seemed very pleased to meet me himself.

"I am," I replied in an unsure manner, "And to whom and I speaking?"

"My name is Roland, shipboard AI," He replied saluting me in the process, "I've sent for someone who will bring you to the Captain's ready room."

"Thank you," I answered greatfully, nodding towards the computerized human.

As soon as Roland disappeared, I found a young female walking towards us. She was wearing what I thought was a grey wet suit with cargo pants to match. Her dark brown hair was tied in a short pony tail behind her head.

She approached us in a slightly cautious manner, but then almost simultaneously she smiled.

"You must be the woman the Captain has spoken very highly of," She replied as she held out her hand for me to take and shake.

"I must be," I answered through a chuckle. I took her hand and returned the shake, "And you are?"

"Commander Sarah Palmer," She explained, "I lead all of the Spartans aboard _Infinity_."

"Wow, Spartans must be incredible," I exclaimed.

"They truly are," She replied smiling at me, "Well, lets not keep the Captain waiting."

My body guards and I followed the commander through the massive corridors that made up _Infinity_. I marveled at the many people we passed by as the scale of the ship started to make sense to me.

It felt almost instantaneous as we soon arrived in the unnamed Captain's ready room.

The door opened quickly. I soon found myself face to face with the AI Roland. He seemed genuinely happy about something.

"Thank you gentlemen," he called out to my escort, "If you can wait outside please, it would be greatly appreciated.

My escort seemed a little concerned at first but then with a wave of my hand, I had them step out. The only people who remained were Commander Palmer and the AI.

"The Captain will be with you shortly. He had some last minute business to attend to," Roland replied.

"So I've never met this Captain who wants to meet me," I stated, "Is there anything I need to know?"

"Only that he has to be the best military leader the UNSC has," Roland perked up at the chance to get to brag on his superior.

"He's got to be one of the most down to earth people despite the fact that he commands the most powerful ship in existence," Palmer voiced her opinion.

I nodded taking in all of the information.

" _I wonder who that could be,"_ I found myself musing again.

Almost as soon as the thought crossed my head, the door opened this time revealing a somewhat tall lean-muscular young man. His brown hair seemed in a slight mess and I could see the stress emanating from his brown eyes.

But he gave me a soft smile as he entered the room. He sat on the edge of the front end of his desk and then motioned for the other two beings in the room to leave. I watched in awe as Roland disappeared in a sparkling array of light.

Despite the chaos that he gave off on his facial expressions, his uniform sat neatly upon his shoulders. The four golden bands across the shoulder guards and his wrists really stood out among the grey monotony of the rest of the uniform.

In spite of the stressed out image I perceived of the Captain, there was something that seemed familiar about him.

I soon found myself smiling back.

"I don't know what it is, but there is something that seems familiar about you," I suddenly voiced, much to my surprise.

"I think I know," He stated as he turned around and picked something up off of the desk behind him.

He then procured a chain that had what appeared to be three sets of dog tags hanging from it. He gingerly handed them to me. I played with them in my hands for a bit before I decided to read the names which would undoubtedly be etched on them. I read the first set and found the name to be one I recognized from many years earlier.

It read Cadmon Lasky.

I looked up at the Captain in some surprise I stared at him a little while longer before I looked down and shuffled them around to read the second set.

The second set read Cadet Chyler Silva; Freshman Cadet and Corbulo Academy of Military Science.

Then it dawned on me. There was only one young man I knew, back before the war with the Covenant took full power, who could have had possesion these two sets of dog tags.

I shifted Chyler's tags out of the way so that I could get the full view of last set. But I felt a small gasp escape my lips as I read the final name.

The third set of tags read Captain Thomas J. Lasky, UNSC Infinity.

I looked up towards the man sitting in front of me as the proverbial lightbulb went off in my head. I felt my hand quickly rise to my mouth as a wave of sobs soon approached.

"Thomas?" I whispered his name out to him.

"Hello, Colonel Mehaffey," He stated with a smirk on his face.

I involuntarily found myself embracing Thomas as soon as the revelation sunk in. As I felt his warm, strong arms wrap themselves around me, I couldn't help but wonder how he survived the attack. It was also then that the tears started rolling uncontrollably.

We embraced each other for what seemed like hours before I pulled away effectively ending the embrace to look into the now recognizable brown eyes of Thomas Lasky. I couldn't believe that the fifteen year old young man I last remember seeing struggling to keep his head above water, was now a high ranking officer in the UNSC Navy.

"How...How did you survive the attack?" I stuttered through my question as I finally sat back down.

"I had help," he replied with a smile, "Though I have to say I'm not the only survivor."

I felt my head spin as the news of other survivors threatened to blow my emotional brain to bits.

"Who else survived?" I asked.

"Besides me, Orenski and Sullivan survived. Chyler almost made it if it wasn't for a Needler Rifle round hitting her," I could sense the sadness fill his voice as he mentioned the death of his childhood friend. I stood again and began to run my hand up and down his right arm. He looked back at me with childhood admiration. Even though he would never say it out loud, I know that he valued me as like the mother figure in his life.

"Do you know how long it took me to track you down?" Lasky began, "Once I learned that you survived, I have been anxious to see you again."

We both laughed a little letting some of the tension of the mundane life we led shed off of us.

"How did you pull through the slaughter?" The Captain inquired of me.

"The Needler Rifle rounds hit me too," I said know full well Thomas was there to witness my supposed death, "But it didn't hit anything major. Once the foul creatures left my area, I managed to crawl back towards the nearest building. I then sent a distress beacon on an encrypted channel to your mother, where she had a group of ODSTs come rescue me."

"Leave it to my mom to come up with a rescue plan," Thomas chuckled.

I followed suit but it quickly died down. We sat in awkward silence for a bit, but was soon interrupted by the door opening and one of my escorts alerting me that the ship was refueled and ready for departure.

I regretted having to leave Thomas again. I knew that there was a lot that he still was working through but seeing him alive and now knowing that he was the soldier everyone had seen in him, made my heart soar.

"I'll escort you down to the hanger," Thomas stated as the he gestured towards the door. I quickly followed his motion and soon fond myself back inside the massive hallways of the ship.

As we made our way back to the hanger, we caught each other up on what we had been doing since that dreadful day in both of our lives. He told me all about his adventures on the Forerunner planet called Requiem and how he came to become the Captain of the UNSC Infinity. I listened intently as I was still pinching myself that he was now a well respected soldier that I knew he had in him from the moment I started mentoring him. Listening to him laugh for the first time ever was good too.

Once we arrived at my ship, I turned to him and just smiled. The four ODSTs that surrounded him made him made him look like quite the celebrity.

I then walked back to him and hugged him one more time

"Thank you for tracking me down," I said after I broke the embrace.

"You're welcome. And I also wanted to know that you are welcome aboard anytime," Thomas responded.

This time, I once again turned around and began to make my way to my seat inside of the Pelican.

As the door to the ship started closing, I took one last glance towards Thomas. He was grinning and seemed genuinely happy. I was thankful with the surprise to know that he was alive and well and survived the attack so many years ago.

I then felt something clink around in my pocket. I stuck my hand inside and found it to be a metal necklace chain and then felt something thin and long protruding from it. I pulled it out to find replicas of Thomas' dog tags. But attached to one of them was a note.

I pulled it out and unfolded it to read it and found it to be a hand written note.

It read:

"Dear, Colonel Mehaffey,

It thrills me beyond belief to find out that you survived the attack on the academy as much as I have. You were and still are one of my most trusted friends and allies that I've had the privilege of serving under.

I wanted you to have these copies of my dog tags as a reminder that I'm still alive and that I am not the same young man you last saw. I am now a high ranking offer inside the UNSC Navy. I don't know if I will ever get to see you in person again, but if that is the case, then I wanted to let you know that I'm still here and I'm still eager to learn all of what you were prepared to tell me all those years ago.

Anyway, I hope this gets to you and hope all is well.

Sincerely, Thomas J. Lasky, Captain of the UNSC Infinity."

I read through the letter multiple times before folding it back up again. I was ecstatic to find out that he was alive and now I will have something to treasure for a lifetime.

This was the best present that anyone could have ever given me. This was truly a reunion of a lifetime and I wasn't ever going to let this memory fade away.


End file.
